Burning the Midnight Oil

To say that I am tired is an understatement.

We spent the weekend hauling in the last of the hay from our bottom land- two round bales at a time. One on the front of the tractor, in the bucket and the other on the back of the tractor, strapped down onto the forks with ratchet straps.

You might say "Well that doesn't sound too bad", but it is about a 1/4 mile from the bottom land to the barn. 50 acres of fields to drive through, a narrow and very steep, dirt lane to maneuver, along the bank of the road, ducking our heads from the encroaching blackberry bushes.

James driving the tractor and me hopping on and off the wheel fender to open and close all of the gates we have to go through. The cattle and horses love to follow us and are very curious as to what we are doing with their delicious hay.

We were lucky that the neighbors who cut and baled the hay for us, were able to haul out 2/3 of the bales for us and put it up in the barn. However, with this haying season, they are super swamped and needed to get on to the next field before the rain comes at the end of this week. The drought has been a headache, so the rain is needed, but it makes our time frames super short for getting things out of the field.

So that left us doing 65+ bales on our own... the hard way. We got our system down to 20 minutes a trip. Not too bad for a half a mile round trip from field to barn and back. Stacked the bales each trip, too.

Saturday was spent in the field from about 1pm to 11pm. We were beat. Sunday, after church, we got right to it again, so 1pm to about 7pm. FINALLY DONE with the hay! Hallelujah!

After that, we were up at the milk barn going over the mess that is now left from the tenants that were in the rental. The place is a disaster. We spent 2 hours up there assessing the damage and the cost it is going to take to clean the place up. It's so bad we had to rope it off and put up No Trespassing signs in hopes that people doing mess with things. It's baaaad.

Before we were done up there, another neighbor came by to tell us that there were about 60 head of cattle from up the road in our fields harassing our cattle. Fences broken down, our cows stressed out over the invasion of these horned black Angus invaders. Our poor polled Herefords were trying to round up the babies and hide in the trees as the Angus were trying to group them up in their herd. It was the craziest thing I've ever seen!

The worst part was that their owner wasn't worried one little bit that his cattle had broken out of his fields, traipsed through government land and ACROSS THE RIVER and up into our fields! Our once raging river is so low that it's created a little stream on our side and a giant sand bar that connects fields that have never touched before.

Me bouncing around in our old pick up truck chasing the Angus one way, the Mister on the other side with the tractor closing in on them from the other side and my amazing father-in-law running round on foot to keep the stragglers in. Finally getting them to the corner of the field they came up on from the riverbank.

We had to sort them out and round them up all while he stood their talking about getting his employees to do it tomorrow! We were shocked! We're hoping they get the hint and go home on their own.

Hopefully the fences hold up enough to keep them out of the field our cattle is now in. Thankfully, we have our bottom land fenced off into sections for grazing and hay fields and that we were able to get all of the bales out of the hay fields before this all went down. It gave our cattle a bit of a safe haven from these aggressive Angus invaders!

Needless to say, we've been putting out literal and figurative fires since Thursday from sun-up to well after midnight every night.

Sometimes, this homesteading thing is a LOT more work than I ever imagined.